


Peter Parker’s Adventures With Thor Guards

by prettyfunny



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Baseball, Bisexual Peter Parker, Depression, Friendship, Healthy Coping Mechanisms, Overall happy but there’s some pretty heavy angst, Panic Attacks, Past Sexual Assault, Peter Parker has ADHD, Team as Family, because it’s a baseball au, bros, but not in the way you assume
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22182835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyfunny/pseuds/prettyfunny
Summary: How baseball has affected Peter Parker’s life through good times, bad times, toil, and success.——The baseball AU literally only I wanted. But I promise past the first chapter it’s not very heavily focused on the details of baseball.——Not (consistently) as angsty as the tags make it seem, I promise!
Relationships: Ben Parker & Peter Parker, Ben Parker/May Parker (Spider-Man), May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Avengers Team, Peter Parker & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Peter Parker & OCs, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 2
Kudos: 40





	1. The Beginning of Peter Parker’s Adventure with ADHD

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome! This chapter has a good amount of details on baseball (which I promise won’t be as much of a focus in future chapters), so if you have any questions let me know!
> 
> Also, for those of you wondering, a Thor Guard is a weather detection/prediction device used at sports complexes to let players, spectators, coaches, and officials know if it is safe to play with the current weather status (#notspon).
> 
> Enjoy!

Peter had always been a bright kid. Hell, Ben knew this well before he and May took him in: he remembers sitting in the living room of Richard and Mary’s New Jersey home with a two-year-old Peter identifying breeds of spiders out of one of Richard’s books on sight. Thats why he and May got so concerned when Peter came home at the end of the first quarter of his fourth-grade year — three years after Ben and May took him in — with a report card showing all C’s except for one A in his sixth-grade math class. 

It starts with Peter coming home incredibly anxious, not knowing how Ben and May would respond. He’s heard stories of kids from school getting yelled at over bad grades...but then again, he isn’t other kids, and Ben and May aren’t really his parents...at least, not the way he sees it. 

Ben’s first thought is to be confused. A naturally bright kid who had never struggled with school before; the child of two internationally renowned scientist. He shouldn’t be struggling with basic fourth grade coursework, right? Or maybe he was rebelling? Was it too early for him to start rebelling? He was only barely 9, but at the same time he’d been through a lot and had always been mature...oh God, would they have to deal with a rebellious 9 year old? That sounds like a whole lot of stupidity in a very short amount of time...but Peter’s never stupid...

So Ben decides to face it head on.

“Peter, buddy, what’s up with this?” He asks, gesturing towards the report card over breakfast the next morning. “I’m not mad, I just want to know if it’s the work or the teacher or something else...is everything alright?” Since Ben had been switched to the midnight shift for the NYPD, he would usually sleep through dinner, but he always made sure he was awake enough to eat breakfast with Peter and walk him to school after his shift ended at 5 AM-the extra $3.50 spent on coffee be damned. 

But Peter, just as shy, quiet, and anxious as ever, simply shrugs and continues his attempts to fit all the remaining Fruity Pebbles into one spoonful. 

“Come on, kid. I don’t know what people have told you, but I promise I won’t get mad at you. Maybe we can try to work on it? How can I help you?”

Peter takes a brief second to breathe, then rests his spoon against the side of the bowl, “I don’t know. I guess I can’t really pay attention. It’s just hard when the teachers are yelling at me because I’m not trying to be a distraction or be rude, I just can’t make myself focus.” His eyes still focused on the colorful cereal, his shoulders still wound up into his ears. 

“Okay, we can work with that.”

At that, the very last response Peter was expecting, his eyes snap up to meet Ben’s. 

“We can?”

“Of course kid. Thank you for telling me.”

After their walk to school Ben spends a full thirty-five minutes panicking. Sure, both he and May are fully employed and both of their jobs have benefits, but he’s a city employee with a shitty insurance plan, and she’s an administrative assistant taking night classes with hopes of becoming a nurse. May’s benefits don’t extend to family members, and Ben’s almost positive his insurance doesn’t cover most mental health medications. Not only that, he knows an ADHD diagnosis is only going to make Peter’s already tragic life even harder. Between getting in trouble and guidance counselor meetings and eventually begging the College Board for accommodations, he knows Peter’s going to have to grow up even quicker than he already has, and he’s going to have to learn how to cope with undeserved hatred from teachers and underestimations from peers. 

So that weekend, after the doctor’s appointment’s been made and all, Ben pulls Peter into their old, beat-up, barely-used Toyota and hauls him, two old gloves, and a Home Depot bucket half-filled with baseballs to a somewhat nearby elementary school with a baseball field in the back. Surprisingly, there’s no team practicing there, even though the fall season is well underway. 

“Alright Pete, what do you think about baseball?”

“Um...the Mets suck?”

After laughing for a second, Ben replies, “While that’s true, I meant what do you think about playing baseball? When I was young me and the guys would always play some ball after school to get our energy out before we went home. What do you think? If it doesn’t help, that’s okay, all I’m asking is you give it a shot. Hell, if it doesn’t help but you still want to play that’s fine by me! All I’m asking for today is some honest effort, yeah?”

Peter nods, although unenthusiastically. He’d always gotten picked on by the kids who played baseball, he doesn’t really think he’d like to associate with them. And isn’t it a little late to start? He’d heard Mikey saying in class the other day that he’d been playing t-ball since he was like six and he’d been starting to get tired of it — would Peter get tired of baseball by the time he was twelve or was Mikey exaggerating? What if he got tired of it right away? What if Uncle Ben hated him because he wasn’t athletic and-

“Pete, you ready?” Uncle Ben calls from the pitcher’s mound. 

Again, Peter nods and jogs over to him.

Ben knows Peter isn’t really fast, or very strong, or particularly aggressive, but he knows the kid’s going to grow up to be a beast. Richard, his younger brother, grew to stand at 6’3”, unfortunately a whole 4 inches taller than himself, and Mary was taller than average, although he wasn’t sure of her height. Unless there was some weird genealogical outlier thing that he wouldn’t understand but Richard would be sure of if he were here...dammit...Peter would one day tower over the other kids. So, he set him up at first and second base. Peter was definitely too anxious to be a pitcher or a catcher, he wasn’t fast enough to be an outfielder, and he definitely wasn’t strong enough to play third or shortstop, so first and second it was. 

“Alright Pete, we’re just gonna throw a little bit back and forth, just to see how it feels, alright?”

Peter nodded, forcing the mitt onto his left hand, standing a few feet a part from Ben. 

“I know we’ve never done this before, so we’re gonna break it down as we go along. First, I’m just gonna have you snap your wrist to get the ball to me.” Ben demonstrated as he spoke, setting his gloved hand under the elbow of his throwing arm and simply flicking his wrist as he let go of the ball, getting it perfectly to the center of Peter’s chest. They continued for a short while before Ben held onto the ball, “That was pretty good, kid! Now I’m gonna have you set up the same way, but you’re gonna start by pulling your forearm back and following through by snapping your wrist, alright?” Ben asked, once again demonstrating as he broke it down. 

“So like a T-Rex?”

“Yeah kid, just like a T-Rex,” Ben replied, chucking. 

They repeated this process a few times, gradually adding more steps to the throwing process, and with it, more distance between the two of them. 

For his obvious lack of strength, Ben couldn’t help but be shocked by the force and accuracy of Peter’s throws, thinking to himself that the kid might be built for shortstop. The only reason to keep a kid with an arm like that away from the outfield or third base was Peter’s clear and sometimes overwhelming anxiety and lack of aggression. Ben could easily picture Peter freezing because he lost the ball in the light of the sun and getting hurt in the outfield or being too passive to forcefully run someone down between third and home. 

Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Ben continued his demonstration, showing Peter how to deal with ground-balls, pop-ups, and fly-balls; he decided that if Peter wanted to stick with baseball they’d get around to the ever-dreaded line-drives. 

The pair continued with their day: Ben setting Peter up as first baseman, second baseman, and shortstop; Ben soft tossing as Peter clumsily swings the dead, scuffed-up, too-heavy bat; Ben’s heart swelling with pride at Peter’s willingness to try something new even if it didn’t seem interesting at first. 

After cleaning up their supplies and stuffing it into the trunk of the car (Ben said it was so that May wouldn’t be mad at them for dirtying the backseat, but Peter had a suspicion that it related to the memories Ben had been talking about all day about his time playing baseball) the two took their respective seats as driver and passenger, ready to head home and relax. 

“So what did you think, Pete?”

After a beat of comfortable silence Peter responded, “I think...I like it a lot. I usually don’t like sports but that was a lot of fun.”

He wouldn’t have been upset at Peter for not liking baseball. He would have been proud of the kid for perusing his own interests despite Ben’s self-proclaimed “old geyser babbling” about things he likes. 

But the twelve year old in him was so excited to have a buddy to play baseball and share his interests with. To tell stories to and share thoughts with. To endure bad days and thrive on good ones alongside. And he was so incredibly proud of Peter for keeping an open mind, even if he may have had moments of doubt. 

He couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his face, feeling every bit like the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, dimpled kid holding a bat, posing for the camera with a genuine smile in that picture of him May had taken from his parents’ house and placed on her bedside table when they had passed away. 

“I’m glad to hear that kid. If you wanna get back out there and practice a little more I’d be more than happy to come with. If you want to play come spring, if you don’t want to play, you won’t upset me either way, you say the word and your wish is my command.”

Peter smiled at Ben’s rambling, recognizing the lineage behind his own long-winded sentences, starting with his grandpa, spreading to his own father and uncle, finally infecting him. He didn’t think he’d ever felt more like Uncle Ben was his dad than in this warm, open moment. 

“I think I’d like to give it a shot.”


	2. Peter Parker’s First Big Adventure With Selflessness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sometimes you forget that you do something and then you get an email reminding you and you’re like oh I should work on that but then AP Lang bitch slaps you in the face and then you work on the thing like 2 months later.
> 
> That may or may not be the reason behind the delay with this chapter.
> 
> Anyway! I’m trying to put more of an emphasis on May, even though I want the first few chapters to focus on Peter’s relationship with Ben since we don’t really see that I feel like I got a little more in the chapter, but it’s still a process.
> 
> Let me know if you have any chapter ideas! Enjoy!

Peter’s never been prouder of himself. Not when he made honor roll, not when got placed in an advanced math class in sixth grade and had to take a bus to the local high school, not when he assembled his first circuit board, never. Because those things never felt like a physical challenge that existed outside the world of logic. Logic, mathematically speaking, came naturally to him. It was running though his cardiovascular system at all hours of the day. When he was in second grade he used to watch the clock during school and figure out how to make the numbers it displayed equal each other. But making his extremely competitive local travel team, the Forest Hills Bandits, was the proudest he’s even been of himself. He had never put this much effort into something over such an extended amount of time — the payoff was the best feeling he could imagine. 

So, of course, following the pattern of Peter Parker’s life, this immense joy came falling from the sky about four months later, in July. Ben had been getting less overtime pay because there were less holidays he had to work and no cut-off furloughs to endure, and due to recent debates among city higher-ups, police salary had been cut in order to give them more pension. May’s salary was the most stable thing they had, but she didn’t work full-time in order to spend more time with Peter. 

And of course this all came unraveling on the first night of a local tournament. Most of the other kids on his team were staying the few nights of the tournament at a nearby hotel, but Ben and May had told Peter that they’d be saying money for the next tournament if they stayed at home for this one, so despite missing out, Peter happily complied. 

But there were several things he didn’t know. He didn’t know that they stayed home because they couldn’t afford a hotel, and didn’t think it was worth it to stay at a motel, even if it meant using some money for gas. He didn’t understand the term inflation, much less comprehend how it was prevalent to their lives. He didn’t know about the recent waves of gentrification that had hit their neighborhood, rising expenses of everything from rent to movies to groceries. And above all else, he didn’t understand how much the fee of travel baseball was, and how much wiggle room it took from their monthly expenditures. 

So where he hears, “I just don’t know what to do, Ben. What can we do?” from down the hall as he tries to fall asleep with adrenaline running through his veins, his interest is piqued. 

And naturally, with Peter following every step of the way, Ben and May’s financial discussion turns into an argument. 

“I understand that we only have limited options, Ben, but what am I supposed to do when our main options are to move, practically leaving our lives behind, or have either of us taking up more hours, spending even less time with the best kid ever, who just happens to abandonment issues?” 

And then there’s a long heavy pause, and the whispered words that follow strike Peter’s heart with regret and convert all the blood in his body into ice. 

“What about the baseball?”

“Ben, no.”

“I’m not saying make him quit, but what if we just have him go back to the house league for a while?”

“Ben, we can’t do that to him. The day he found out he made that team is the happiest I’ve seen him in years; Ben, we can’t do that to him.”

“It wouldn’t be as risky as moving, and it wouldn’t be as much of a change as us working more, it’s the easiest option we have. He’s always been a mature kid, I’m sure if we explained he’d understand.”

And then shit really hits the fan, as Peter’s classmates would say.

“I said no! Besides whatever it is he does with that big brain of his, baseball is the one thing that makes Peter happy! I refuse to tarnish it! We decided to not tell him about our situation for a reason, do you remember that? I didn’t want him to end up like my mother, forever afraid of buying new things, and you didn’t want him to turn out like Richard, ignoring everything else in his life in order to be financially successful. What happened to that? And even if we do resort to other options, how would he cope without baseball? You know what he said to me the other day? He said, ‘I feel like my dad would be proud of me for playing baseball, but that’s not even why I play, I play because is makes me feel better. Do you think that’s okay?’ And we’re just, what, going to rip him away from the only good friends he has, from the healthiest environment he’s been in outside of our home, from the thing that makes him feel better?”

And even though he’s not in the room, Peter can feel the room freeze, like a wind chime on the day of an impending storm before the breeze arrives. 

“We’ll talk about it later.”

“No we will not! Ben, we need to get this figured out now, we can’t just let these bills keep stacking up, we nee-“

“I understand that May, but it’s been a long day, we’re both tired; before the neighbors get pissed at us, let’s go to sleep and get our minds clear.”

And in the following thirty minutes, Peter makes his decision.

He’s going to quit baseball. Forever. No matter the toll on him — as long as Ben and May are okay. 

— —

Peter’s up before Ben wakes him up. 

He doesn’t have to be at the baseball field until 11:30, but he barely got more than a few hours of sleep. So when he hears Ben and May rustling around in the kitchen, likely making breakfast, he gathers himself, formulates what he’s going to say, even though it brings him to tears, and holds his head high as he walks into their apartment kitchen. 

Except he can’t look Ben in the eye with what he’s about to say, so his gaze slowly makes its way to the stained white countertop. 

And it doesn’t take long for either of them to notice his mood. 

“What’s wrong kid, nervous for today?”

And Peter takes a big breath, and all the sudden his speech flees his mind, and all that spills out with his exhale is, “I hate baseball and I never want to play again!”

And once again, the force of gravity seemingly rises above 9.8 g, leaving them in another extremely heavy silence, even though it appears that nothing is causing their downfall.

When all the sudden May’s gentle voice pierces the silence, “Peter, baby, what? It looked like you were having so much fun yesterday.”

Peter’s voice seemingly can’t get past his teeth as he chokes through his heavy downpour of tears, “Well it was fake and I want to quit.”

Ben and May grow suspicious, exchanging glances as Ben asks, “Could you tell us why you’d like to quit? Are the kids being mean to you?”

Oh God, Peter didn’t even think of that. He loves his teammates more than almost anything in the world, he would do anything for them...what would he do when he has to leave them? 

Disregarding those thoughts, Peter charges on, despite deeming his voice too weak to use. He buries his head into his folded arms atop the counter top and shakes his head of curls. 

A thin, gentle hand finds its way into his hair, and a more roughed-up one gently rubs circles into his back as he sobs, all three in an awkward moment full of lack of insight into what to do.

And gently, Aunt May asks, “Peter, did you hear our conversation last night?”

And Peter, deciding the time for lying is up, nods his head against his forearms.

“Baby, that’s not for you to worry about. That’s our job. What we want for you is to be happy. If it means I work more hours, or we move -“

“Or I get another job,” Ben interjects, with the results of May’s heading snapping up at him in shock, even if Peter doesn’t know that they hadn’t discussed that previously. 

“All we want if for you to love how you’re living, and if you can’t do that, we want you to be able to see a future where you can, okay?”

Eventually, albeit quietly and hesitantly, Peter responds with a mumbled, “Okay.”

And Ben’s hand claps back on his shoulder, more confidently this time, “Great. Now how about you go get dressed, and we’ll finish making breakfast. Gotta keep our boy well-fed for his game, huh?”

As Peter retreats to his bedroom with a shy but honest smile, all Ben can think about are the places that kid — his kid — will go in the future; not their struggles, or moving, or the fact that he knows just enough mechanics for that to be a plausible second job, but the fact that Peter Parker is destined for greatness, one way or another. 

Too bad he’ll never get to see it. 

But he doesn’t know that yet; and that’s a story for another time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you wanna chat my tumblr is pretty-funny, even though I rarely post on there


	3. Peter Parker’s Misadventure with his Baseball Sleepover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER: childhood sexual abuse (present-tense) and 1 curse word

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry this took so long! It’s highkey a cliffhanger but it feels right to me??? Idk like it feels but also not really and I like it?  
> Being honest, I started writing this chapter immediately after I wrote the last one and finished it within the week, it just didn’t feel right until I went back and was able to appreciate what I did.  
> Also this is so god damn metaphor heavy because I was reading Bridge of Clay at the time. But you could use it as a rhetorical choice to represent how Peter is both older now and has been forced to grow up tremendously fast  
> Idk it’s all up to you

ADHD, for Peter, generally means that the day passes by in what feels more like 6 than 24 hours. The world just moves too fast and the speed of his thoughts only makes it spin faster, leaving barely enough time for sleeping, or eating, or trivial things like English homework. 

But not today. Not right now. 

Right now both his thoughts and the passage of time are far slower; the past fifteen minutes have lasted three hours. 

He’s 12, the teachers taught his sixth grade class what rape was just this past year. But he never thought it’d be him. He’d heard from pretty much everyone - the teachers, the news, Ben - that rape is most prevalent to girls. He’d been taught that if he heard a girl screaming “help” or “fire” that he should step in, because he was in the process of naturally developing muscle, and they weren’t. He was never taught what to do if his babysitter (or “supervisor,” as May said when he complained that babysitter made him sound like a baby) showed him porn, and then tried to replicate that on him. Sure, he learned about rape but he never thought he’d be laying on his “friends” gray sheets, trapped beneath someone five years his elder, as the increasingly-familiar distance between his mind and his body took over, turning his legs to putty, his arms to jello, and his tears to rivers. 

The only thing he could think in this moment was how stupid he was to be so naïve, to think that he would never need to learn to protect himself. To think that someone as cool as Skip would actually want to be his friend. 

And after a while, it was over, but the instances kept coming. Ben’s second job as a mechanic slowly grew more demanding, and May’s gradual conversion to full time slowly took over her life. Peter never blamed them, he could never hate them; in fact, he was so scared of losing them that he didn’t say a word about the secrets between him and Skip Westcott. 

And then the walls and lies he created came crashing down around him. 

The night of the baseball sleepover came. 

Peter spent weeks protesting the sleepover. His teammates were his best friends in the world, and Ben and May knew that, but they didn’t know that lately he’d been questioning the meaning of friendship, and what it entailed, because if it looked like anything remotely similar to what was between him and Skip, he wanted no part of it. If the price of friendship was equal to the weight of the body on top of his, then it was no where near worth it. 

“Come on, Peter. You’ll love it! Remember all your sleepovers with Ned? I know it’s been a while, but think about how fun those were!” and, “You’ll regret it if you don’t go. I don’t know if you’ve realized this yet, but me and your aunt are pretty lame,” and “Your friends will miss you, I’m sure of it. Think of all the fun you’d have! I know Jimmy’s dad is a fan of the Yanks but I’m sure watching one game is forgivable,” and any other variation are all that bounce around the house the week leading up to the sleepover until the ultimatum finally comes. Ben and May sit him down at their tiny circular dinner table one evening and deliver the final blow: “Peter, baby, we’re worried about you. If you don’t feel comfortable telling us why you don’t want to go to the sleepover, that’s okay for now. But you have to at least do something that night. You need to see more people outside of school and baseball, it’s not health to only spend time with us and Skip, you know? So here are your options - you go to the sleepover, you spend the night with Ned, or you go over by Skip. If you need us to pick you up early, we’ll pick you up early, but you have to spend at least some time out, okay?”

Uncle Ben finally chimes in, “And after Saturday we’re going to have a discussion about what’s going on, okay? I know you don’t want to talk to us right now, but we’re worried about you, kid. If someone’s picking on you we can help. Nothing you could tell us would make us upset at you,” and for the final nail in the coffin, Ben shines an award-winning smile to cover his thick voice, “okay?”

Peter feels like the world is ending, but just for him. He feels the isolation of knowing he’s the only one of the damned. He feels the insurmountable pressure of knowing he’s going to be alone in The Pit. He feels the pull away from it too; it’s the fleeting moment of swinging between monkey bars, not knowing for sure if you’ll be able to move forward, have to recede back, or plummet down. It’s the dread of the fall, but the closer you get to the ground, the less you feel. 

Eventually, he whispers, “Okay Uncle Ben. I’ll go to the sleepover.” He figures any one of the people who will be in the house that night are less likely to try anything because he’ll be in a group. He’d read about safety in numbers a book he rented on evolution. Even though he wasn’t positive if anyone else had the same type of friendship as him, he figured it was safer to be in a fuller house. 

A few days later, the same old Toyota that introduced him to baseball dropped him off to face twelve kids who shared his love of the sport. 

Uncle Ben, with a sweatshirt and sweatpants over his police uniform, put the car into park, and turned to directly face Peter. “Alright Pete, you got this kid. I know you’ve been nervous, but just try to have fun for the first few minutes. It’s the same way we tackle school. Remember? Ten minutes by ten minutes. But if the first six sets don’t go well, give the landline a call. I have to go to work but your aunt will be right over to pick you up, okay?” Peter nods, remembering their agreement that he would do his best to stay for at least an hour. “Okay, I have to get going, kid, but I’m so proud of you. I love you lots. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Peter already feels his mind fighting to escape his body as he nods again. “See you tomorrow. Love you too, Uncle Ben.”

“Alright, you got ‘em tiger.”

Peter gathers his tattered backpack and his rolled-up sleeping bag into his arms, walking the short path up to the front door. The Lamont’s were one of the only families to have a house, since they lived just outside city limits, so they had volunteered to host the annual team sleepover. Peter could tell most of the kids were already inside by the amount of screaming. He had never been a fan of loud noises, but the energy his team and the sport filled him with always overpowered the headache that was due to come at some point. 

Finally, he lifted his weighed-down forearm to knock on the wooden door. “Peter’s here!” preceded several more screams before Mr. Lamont opened the door with a bright smile. 

“Come on in, Pete! You can drop your stuff in the living room. The food just got here, so it’s dinner for now.”

Peter nods silently, following Mr. Lamont’s instructions, joining the rest of the boys around the pizza-covered rectangular table. 

He takes time in sets of ten until he doesn’t have to; he’s genuinely having fun! His mind is tethered back to his body as his friends gather around, commenting on the ups and downs of the rerun of the previous night’s Yankees game. 

And then the game ends. And Peter goes to the bathroom. And when he comes back, some movie he doesn’t recognize is on the TV. Some movie with a boy and a girl heavily kissing. Logically, he can tell it’s different than what Skip shows him, Tim’s parents are still in the room! Plus, Tim’s older brother isn’t even in the room, so it couldn’t possibly be that, but at the same time...logic has a history of losing battle after battle against continuous trauma. And that losing battle is so much worse than the gradual ascent from his body. This is the weight of the world in the form of a teenage boy pressing down on every part of his body. This is seeing ugly dark orange walls where there should be off-white and family photos and live laugh love signs. This is asphyxiation coming from several different sources. 

This is hearing yelling in the background but just thinking it’s the sound of your own mind because the one other person in the room could not give less of a fuck about how you genuinely feel. This is hands on his shoulders, but fear that they’re going other places because that’s how it feels. This is the shuffling of the feet of twelve twelve year old boys because there are parents worrying about thirteen kids. 

The come-down is the slamming of a taxi door. The sight of May’s distinct pink-rimmed glasses. The vertigo of coming back to the real world. The confusion of seeing happy family photos where should be filthy posters. 

He doesn’t realize that they left his stuff at the Lamont’s house until him and May are in the taxi on the way back to their apartment, and he honestly doesn’t have the energy to feel embarrassed. May’s arm rests around his shoulders, she’s not wearing a seatbelt. 

“You should put your seat belt on.” His voice sounds creaky even to him, but he doesn’t want her to get hurt because she was trying to comfort him. 

“I’d rather sit here with my favorite guy, but I’ll put the middle buckle on.”

In that moment, he wants to declare the holiness of May Parker. She doesn’t grill him on what just happened or divert the direction of the conversation, she just gives him time to process his surroundings and get in-touch with reality. 

“I called Ben’s supervisor, he’s going to be home soon after us. I know you won’t want to, but baby, we’ve been worried for weeks. I’m afraid we need to talk about this, Pete. I’ll make you some tea right when we get home and we can throw on some Hendrix while we wait for Ben, what do you say?”

Jimi Hendrix had always been theirs. He wasn’t connected to May through blood, made evident by the way he rarely included “aunt” when talking to or about her, but when Ben and May had first taken him in, she has been sure to set up something that was purely theirs. Peter isn’t really sure why she did it, but he’d always appreciated the tunes of the guitarist. The comfort the music had given him since day one was priceless. 

He doesn’t know how they got to their apartment...the entire ride feels fuzzy. Like his mind was the sonar for a anchor-less boat upon slow yet harsh waves. The first thing he solidly recognizes is a hand laying gently on the back of his head. Then arms around his shoulders. Then the smoothness of a check against his temple. Then the sight of Ben on his knees in front of him. 

“Peter, baby, oh boy, oh...Peter are you alright? How are you feeling?”

Peter can’t tell if he’s really nodding or if he just feels like he’s moving his head, but he mutters, “I’m feeling okay, Uncle Ben.”

He’s not entirely sure, but he thinks he hears a rocky whisper of, “oh what the hell.”

“Peter, do you know what happened while you were at Timmy’s?”

Peter feels his heart stop for a second. He doesn’t really know why. The feeling feels familiar but he can’t remember ever feeling it before. “I don’t know Uncle Ben. It feels kinda fuzzy.”

That’s when Aunt May moves from her station behind Ben, first removing her hands from his shoulders and ending up cross-legged between Ben and him, almost forming a triangle. 

“Petey we think you had a panic attack. It happens when something happens to make someone super scared and that fear takes a physical form.”

He’s 12 and has internet access, of course he knows what a panic attack is - and of course he knows that’s not all they are, but again, he never thought he’d be one to experience them. 

“So Peter were worried about what cause your panic attack.”

Peter wonders, absently, why they keep using his name. They’ve never said his name this many times in such a short amount of time before. He doesn’t understand it, but he thinks it feels significant. 

He doesn’t even feel his jaw open. 

“I didn’t like what they had on the tv.”

May and Ben share a look; not for the first time, he wishes they would keep him in the loop. “You don’t like fish either but you don’t act like that when you see a fish on tv.”

“I could.”

Ben’s cheeks inflate. Aunt May’s smooth, quiet tone sounds drowned out by his deep sigh as she says, “But we all know this is something different.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! I’ll try to get the next chapter out soon...my college apps are due in 8 days so I should be able to work faster after that!  
> Let me know what you think and/or if you have any suggestions or chapter ideas!! My tumblr is pretty-funny, if you want more direct communication  
> Have a great week and take care of yourselves!!! :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you wanna chat my tumblr is pretty-funny, even though I rarely post on there


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